Watching the world of east London politics

The Battle of the Big Guns

So barring any huge surprises from the Tories (and I hear they may well be lining up a good candidate), it will be Lutfur versus John Biggs for the Tower Hamlets mayoralty come May 2014.

The “Merc” versus the Morris Minor, if you like.

Actually, I’m not even sure John drives a car so it might be a culture shock should he be triumphant and see the princely wealth of resources Lutfur would have amassed for him in Mulberry Place.

This contest could well be the most interesting fight in local government next year.

Biggs, a former council leader, ousted in 1995 by colleagues who still have (or, as some say, think they have) a fair degree of sway locally (Michael Keith etc). He then went on to make a name for himself as the London Assembly’s biggest ankle biter, first as a thorn in the side to an Independent Mayor Ken Livingstone (although he was a loyal ally when Ken rejoined the Labour fold), and then as an attack dog on Boris Johnson, who I’m told, both likes him and his bulldog sarcasm.

When the Tower Hamlets mayoralty was up for grabs in 2010, John saw it as his chance to have one last Big Job in politics (Westminster was never for him), and when the London Labour party anointed Helal Abbas amid the chaos of the Lutfur (non)-selection that year, he may well have thought his opportunity had gone forever.

However, Abbas’s defeat reopened the door, but how will he fare against an opponent who seems increasingly impervious to mainstream criticism and scrutiny and who is raiding precious council reserves to fund a re-election campaign?

It will boil down to ideas, charisma, resilience and that hardy Tower Hamlets perennial: race.

During this last Labour selection contest, a former deputy leader of Tower Hamlets council, Jalal Ahmed, distributed what was even by this borough’s standards one of the most poisonous and loaded character assassination pamphlets I’ve seen. The document was full of personal history between the two men and as it was also full of libels I won’t reproduce it, but it demonstrated the extent to which people will go to smear a rival.

I wasn’t in Tower Hamlets in the Nineties so I’m not familiar with the details of that period, but the accusations in the document bore no resemblance to any of the conversations I’ve had with John since he started snapping at me in 2006.

But the document was perhaps a clue as to how the next 12 months will unfurl: “What’s he ever done for the Bengali community?”

Maybe his many Bengali admirers, including London Assembly member Murad Qureshi, or Cllr Abdal Ullah, or even, once-upon-a-time, a certain Lutfur Rahman, or indeed Ken Livingstone, may like to answer that.

When Len Duvall, another Labour London Assembly member, announced at Stepney’s Positive East building last night that John was the party’s new candidate, there were barely 30 people in the room. The earlier than expected announcement had caught many of the activists–still down the pub or in the nearby coffee shops–by surprise. As such, the applause was surprisingly muted. Perhaps, most of those there at that time were supporters of Rachael Saunders, understandably disappointed by losing a close race.

Two narratives are being peddled about this. Firstly, that Rachael had benefited from a “bloc” vote controlled by Lutfur, who, the theory goes, perceived her as his least dangerous opponent, or as someone who could knock out Biggs in the first round. And secondly, how can Biggs be the “unity candidate” when he was the first choice of barely a quarter of the party membership: that the Labour party is now split like never before, that there will be further defections to Lutfur’s camp and we will see a contest fought on Bengali versus White next year.

On the first, as one of Rachael’s backers put it to me, it must have been galling for many to see a young white woman do so well: she couldn’t possibly have amassed that much support all by her little self. While there may have been some strategic voting go on by some (who knows how many), given that Lutfur trounced Abbas last time, why wouldn’t he have ordered his mates to get him selected again?

And on the second…well, it’s deal time. As Josh Peck is standing down as group leader in May, Labour have a vacancy to fill. Yet the party now finds itself in the odd position of having a leader locally who is not a councillor. Biggs will have to be the boss but outside the group: he will have to get involved in strategy decisions and on how to take on Lutfur and his cabinet over the next year.

No doubt some will question how he can remain an Assembly member, which is a full time job, and find the time to do “council” work. But his answer will surely be that most councillors have full time jobs anyway. It is possible that a selfless Labour councillor could resign to allow him a seat for the next year, but while it would be fun to see him in the chamber, I don’t think a forced by-election would be an appropriate use of our money.

So that means he needs a close ally to fill Josh’s shoes, someone who can straddle the different factions and someone who may eventually become his deputy mayor. Abdal Ullah is certainly up for such a role and maybe, after all these years, his time has finally come. Having a Bengali on the “ticket” would certainly help John.

Abbas would also tick the boxes, perhaps more so given his experience and strong showing in the selection process. But would he be interested?

Perhaps Rachael is the most deserving, but as this is Tower Hamlets, having two whites run the party would create an obvious opportunity for Lutfur’s race-obsessed groupies.

Cllr Shiria Khatun maybe??

And how John manages the Labour group will be intriguing. I can’t see him stomaching the covert alliance with the Tories that has proved so effective for Labour. Imagine what Boris would say to him…

But how will Team Lutfur attack Biggs, though? After all, for the past two years, his supporters have often pointed out that Biggs was also an injured party in the 2010 selection process. And as he hasn’t been part of the Labour group that they so bitterly criticise in the council chamber, that line of attack isn’t open to them either. Maybe they’ll say he’s been out of Tower Hamlets politics for too long: that would be an irony.

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20 Responses

The Bengali community have had it all their way for at least the last ten years. It’s about time the other two thirds of this borough, all the other communities, got some attention.

We all know this will come down to race and its a truth that most Bengali people won’t want to vote for Biggs because they won’t gain anything from it. They know they can approach Lutfur through back channels and get rewarded for supporting him. As for the non-Bengali voters they’ve mostly stopped voting because they can only see how Labour has betrayed them so utterly; being complicit in the virtual annihilation of the traditional, mixed, East End community. Most working-class white people in the borough now hold TH Labour in such complete contempt they’d rather eat glass than back them. So unless Biggs can convince them he’s NOT going to just serve Bengali interests then they won’t come out and Biggs has already lost.

Biggs and Ullah would be a great team. Its all about who can get their voters out. Both camps will argue against the Tory cuts so in reality there’s going to be little difference in policy between the two. Labour desperately need to get the white working class to come out and vote. They also need support from the Bengali community as they are by far the most politically active community. I don’t know much about the other communities so can’t comment on them. I am deliberately mentioning the race factor here as its important in TH and in politics generally all over the world. To pretend otherwise is like that ostrich in the previous post. Lets hope Labour can put up a team that can appeal to all communities in contrast to Lutfur who will undoubtedly target just one.

People, regardless of their race (which you are using instead of their background culture) need a quality of life. That objective is shared by all normal people.

Things in the LBTH will never improve until the abandonment of the senseless politicisation of local services. Why should the emptying of dustbins,the repair of potholes and the provision of local libraries be politically controlled ???

Time to scrap the executive mayor (and save vast amounts of public money as often publicised on this excellent blog) and return councils to control by cross-party committees co-opting members of the public.

All this mess was caused by the major national political parties (OK, locally just Labure and Torees) who always put political power and control ahead of actually serving the local public. It is really like a game played by pre-teenage kids in a school playground. Its certainly does not appear to be the behaviour of grown-up responsible adults.

None of them have a 100% genuine attachment to actually serving the public and making locals feel wanted, treasured and welcome. Instead we get a bunch of monsters worthy of featuring in a Hollywood (or Bollywood) blockbuster of power abuses and what seems to me to be corruption.

Ugh. English local government stinks and LBTH stinks more than most. How is the mayor’s pet poodle these days (Isabella) ?

Jon Lansman has made the following comment on the Left Futures site, for which he writes. It’s worth including here:

Even if most of Sirajul’s first round votes went to Rachael, roughly half of the Abbas votes split no more than 2:1 in favour of John. If there were any voters for Abbas who should not have voted (and I suspect there were a few in spite of the obvious efforts of party officers and staff), they are even less likely to have transferred to anyone else.

Although I haven’t spoken to Rachael about it, I would be surprised if she would want to make any fuss about the result. The fact is that she did very well even though she lost. She wants to see Labour beat Lutfur and won’t do anything that will undermine that objective.

The most interesting aspect of the voting (apart from the closeness of the result) is the comparison with last time when Abbas’s vote started at 117 and climbed to 157 in the final ballot. This time, he got fifty more than that in the first ballot on a much lower poll (551 this time compared with 868 last time). That takes some explaining.

Many of the 433 people who voted for Lutfur last time will have either left the party or abstained this time. John Biggs started this time with 6 more votes than he finished last time, though he will have got some support from people who voted for Lutfur last time. Rachael will presumably have inherited those who voted for Michael Keith last time, 89 rising to 100 in round 4, but did very much better, including a solid block of Bengali support.

The most worrying thing for Labour is that there were over 300 fewer voters in the contest.

“The most worrying thing for Labour is that there were over 300 fewer voters in the contest.”

Turnout was over 70% – which is incredible for an internal selction process. Name me a Trade Union general secretary elected on a turnout like that.

Someone needs to buy Lansman a new abacus. 751 valid votes plus 15 spoilt papers. Plus membership is lower since the clearout of non valid members and there are lots of new members. It’s actually a higher turnout. Now THAT needs some explaining! Well not really, hacked off party memebrs got involved to chose the best candidate to beat Lutfur. SIMPLES.

“This time, he got fifty more than that in the first ballot on a much lower poll (551[sic] this time compared with 868 last time). That takes some explaining”

Hmmm.

Could it simply be the fact that that was four years ago? Membership of any organisation is dynamic not static*, and – shock horror – people change their minds about things.

– Some genuine members may have genuinely thought Lutfur was the best candidate last time round.

– There are lots of new members in that pool as well, some of whom will have thought Abbas was the best candidate.

*I recently received a ballot paper for the Generaal Secretary election in the Unite union. I haven’t been a member for several years. obviously I voted for McCluskey :-)

There was a very obvious alliance between Abbas and John Biggs, against the Rachel and Lutfur Alliance.
Rachel and her supporters should be embarrassed that they have let Lutfur again have a say in Tower Hamlets Laour party.

There was a scray reminder of 2010, when after the lunch period, the Lutfur vote came out,and in in numbers. Observing from outside the polling station this was the last thing that Labour needed, a hrash reminder that Lutfur still has a massive say in our party.

The fact that one of our senior councillors can have an alliance with lutfur and than slate him in public, is the reason why Tower Hamlets Labour party will never be clean.

Rachel Saunders has a lot of explaning to do,making an alliance with the enemy and than telling us how she can beat him.

So the result pleases me, that we defeated Lutfur on saturday and will do so again next year with John.

Stop picking on Rachel. The truth is politics is about being pragmatic and all previous leaders and candidates have made decisions that on hindsight may look suspect but if they went through it would be Ok.

Yes Rachel may have done a deal with Lutfur but John himself did a few deals and got the second preference from people like abbus and others. It’s a shame siraj couldn’t pull off any great feats his always a loser.

Well if Abbas wants a third shot at the mayoralty in 2018, he certainly will not be encouraging the turnout on May 2014 in favour of Biggs!

It was obvious that Rachael benefitted hugely from Lutfurites votes, simply because Mayor Lutfur desperately wanted to avoid well-recognised John Biggs, opting for newby Rachael as an easier opponent to beat. Anyone thinking otherwise does not understand Tower Hamlets politics.

Sadly, the Bangladeshi media which includes 6 television channels and a dozen free newspapers distributed at all mosques every Friday has played, and will play, a huge role in promoting Lutfur Rahman as the Bangladeshi Muslim choice. Anything otherwise, e.g. White non-Muslim is a racist, in this case, John Biggs. The difficulty John will have is these television live debate program’s which double-up as a hustings forum. Literally all the guests and phone-in callers will speak in Bengali, and John would be making faces trying to keep up or understand what is being said of him? His communication with these important audiences will be severely hindered.

If we examine the last election campaign, we watched the now expelled Labour councillor Shahed Ali take on both Lutfur and his banker Shirajul Haque almost on every television debate without fear. Other Bengali Labour councillors stayed clearly away with fear of the backlash from the Lutfurites. He even represented the absent Abbas in the ‘Operation Black Vote’ live television hustings. I cannot see Labour Bengali Councillors, also seeking re-election, dare taking on this role for fear of upsetting the Lutfurites! Abbas ran his selection campaign this time round on setting the precedence for the need to have a Bengali Mayor. Will he be continuing this trend, or simply give-up and give-in to the prospect of no further political career in Tower Hamlets? I very much doubt that!

I agree with most of what has been said here apart from the assumption Biggs will be cast as a racist candidate in Bengali media. Bengali media will support Lutfur for sure just like the Murdoch media support the Tories. Biggs needs to counter this by having a good Bengali deputy who can fight those laughable TV debates. I would strongly advise him to stay clear of Abbas who is toxic. Biggs and Ullah would be a great ticket.